999 Days
by Jayeffdee
Summary: Marceline leaves without a word and comes back 999 days later. A stream-of-consciousness Bubbline reunion full of frustration, anger, guilt, and miles and miles of longing.


999. Marceline has been gone for 999 days and Princess Bonnibel Bubblegum does not even have to check the calendar to know that. She counts them in every breeze that passes through her bedchamber, every beam of sunlight through the hallowed halls of the Candy Castle, every strawberry apple cherry tomato that gets placed in front of her at royal feasts, every pluck of a bass string that hums through the crowd of the Annual Candy Kingdom Yule Ball and vibrates low in her core; in the same place where the ache never subsides, even in a warm bath or in her lab, the only places she feels untouchable in this glob-forsaken place.

She experiments. She pours glowing liquid into beakers filled with powder, the foam gushing from the mouth and flowing onto the table. She ignores the mess. She works around it, the foam and the puddles and the piles of paper and she loves it, she loves the clutter, and in it she knows exactly where she is, where to find what she needs. She can navigate this cacophony like she was born and raised in it and when Peppermint Butler dutifully offers to pick up after her she tells him that if he touches it she will kill him, but in the politest way possible. This mess is hers, just like this kingdom, but she can keep this mess the way she wants it, and she will never lose them, this mess and this kingdom, they will never leave her.

She doesn't sleep. She lays in her bed, she closes her eyes, she falls unconscious and gets up at dawn, but she doesn't sleep. The time she spends horizontal in the dark is full of fog and thick, hot, sticky humidity; her dreams are an endless trudge through a swamp wasteland. Ankle deep in a brackish creek, she can feel the chemicals tingling on her candy skin as she slides along slick mossy stones and calls out to the darkness. There is no response, there is never a response, just a choke from her own throat as she wades deeper and deeper and deeper

The butler notices but says nothing. The shadows pooling over eyes sunken deep into a jawbreaker skull; the yawns bitten back, hidden behind a dainty pink hand from the view of nobles and dignitaries who arrive to sign treaties and negotiate embargoes; the days spent silent in a laboratory, ending only with a minty hand on a twitching calf as a face rises from the table, traces of pencil equations left on a throbbing pink cheek. He knows but he says nothing. He would carry her to bed if he could. He would find the queen and bring her back if he could. But instead he brings tea and scones, and reminds the princess of her 9am appointment with the Duke of Nuts.

Marceline is 1,000 years old and has been gone for 999 days. Something about this seems funny, or intriguing, or infuriating, but Princess Bubblegum showers in silence and thinks, instead, of how she will present today's proposal to Flame King. She dries herself off, she combs her hair, she puts on her dress, she goes downstairs and has breakfast with Peppermint Butler. Flame King arrives and agrees to the terms she has suggested, and a flash fills the brightly decorated conference room as Peppermint snaps a photo of the agreeable royalty.

She spends the day in her lab. She is not to be disturbed, she instructs, unless there is an emergency. Still, Finn and Jake make an appearance later in the day, fresh from adventurous gallivanting, and the interruption is not entirely unpleasant. Like a burst of cool air through the heat from the Bunsen burners, but soon she remembers what it felt like for a breeze to tickle her nose just before a shadow loomed over her prone form in the bed and a low chuckle floated close to her ear and she waves them away in order to finish her work.

The sun sets peach and plum in the sky and Peppermint Butler comes to tell her of the impending evening. She insists on more time, which he obliges, but returns hours later to suggest that she retire to her chamber. She refuses, half-lidded and half-hearted, glob, what she would give for a decent night's sleep, for a dinner that was still warm, for a sign that all is not lost. She turns off the gas and the lights and walks past Peppermint toward the stairs. She will go to her chamber, she will change her clothes, she will get into bed and she will not cry she will not cry she will not cry

Science can tell her how quickly an object moves through space, and what hydrochloric acid will do to candy flesh, and how to rewrite the DNA of a bitter old experiment gone wrong, but science does not tell her what to do when her window opens in the dead of night and the wind chills the wetness trailing down her cheeks. It's not real, she says, because she imagined this every night for 999 nights but only ever finds herself back in that swamp with the slosh of her feet and the scent of chemicals and dirt.

She feels her before she hears her. The air changes, the tension of silence breaks without sound but with the prickle of another being on the back of her neck. She turns, but the darkness heeds no warning, until a hand, cool and heavy with so much to say, lands gently on her shoulder.

She bolts, upright, bites her lip to stop the scream, not of terror or warning but of anguish, of desire, of desperation, of 1,000 days worth of praying she was dead and 1,000 nights of praying she would see her again. She can see her silhouette now: eyes like the embers of a newly stoked fire, hair like a trail of black smoke, and the princess is kindling as she grabs the face before her and crashes it to her lips. She kisses the mouth, the cheeks, the nose, the forehead, the chin, she captures the lips with her own and feels them react, reciprocate, return like their wayward owner, whose hands clasp two pink shoulders and pull her closer. Their bodies flush, pink hands grasp onto the back of a cool grey head, tangle with coarse hair, their faces press painfully together, noses crushed and the salt of tears and sweat mingling together from one host to the other. They break and she breaks, the princess, she sobs, openly, loudly, the loudest she's been in 1,000 days. She wraps her arms around Marceline and holds her, squeezes, as tight as she can, and it's not a hug, it's not a gesture of affection or admiration, it is captivity, it is a stronghold, it is an official statement from the ruling class. She cries into the leather shoulder, the crook of her bare grey neck, she feels the skin under her mouth and she bites down, digs her teeth into the flesh to stop the sounds, to muffle her long gasps for breath, and the silence of the vampire rings even louder than the sobs.

Marceline slips out from her shaking pink prison and removes her jacket, her shirt, her boots, and her pants. She hovers, naked, above the princess's clothed body and illuminated in the moonlight she looks disgusting, horrible, ugly, the curve of her hip, the silk of her skin, the heave of her breasts as she takes in the breath she doesn't need and Bubblegum hates it, she utterly loathes it. She stares at the nude form inches from her fingertips and she yelps, a low snarling sound that escapes from her lips as her hands betray her face and she slides her fingers from bottom to top, pulling the head down and throwing kisses as she would tight fisted punches. She runs her hand up and down and over the bumps of Marceline's spine and rubs the other harshly across the vampire's cheek, rough and peppered with tiny gleaming scars from 1,000 days of rambling and roving and making a mess and this is a mess, a fucking wonderful mess, as the princess finds herself shedding her own clothes and feeling skin on skin on mouths on skin and glob how she missed this how she fucking hates how much she missed this how she squirms and moans under the icy hands of a queen unfit to rule anything but the body of a beloved princess.

She punctuates her pleasure with punches, balled fists and open-handed slaps, she delivers them to the head, the arms, the back of her lover, she bites down on an earlobe, the palm of a hand, the bones of the clavicle, she marks each piece of anatomy like a good scientist should, with details of every grievance because the queen is guilty with every muscle she tenses.

When they finish, they pant, they fight each other for the air streaming in through the open window. Lying side by side, Marceline shakes off the remnants of her climax and finds the strength to float, albeit quavering, over the edge of the bed, retrieving discarded clothing and doling it out to its respective past wearers. The monarchs dress, silently, slowly, aching from want and hurt, they hurt, oh, glob, they hurt so bad in so many places and in so many ways and Bonnibel feels the tears coming again and she's putting all her will into getting dressed so they flow and they dampen her shirt as she pulls it over her head and by time she pulls it down Marceline is halfway to the window and the princess screams, she screams without considering the open window and the Banana Guards and Peppermint Butler, and she throws her pillow at her guest because it's the closest thing she can find and how fucking pathetic does that look but she doesn't care. Marceline continues her path to the window and the princess bolts, she scrambles over the bed and jumps to the floor and rushes, naked from the waist down, between the queen and her escape, she throws the window closed, she locks it tight, she turns and she pushes Marceline back, back, back, back until her thighs meet the mattress and she falls onto it, feet dangling just barely over the floor. Bonnibel climbs onto her lap, straddles her waist, places her palms on either side of the atrociously beautiful face and as she stares into the eyes of the Queen of the Vampires she makes her point.

She crawls, then, to the head of the bed and under the comforter. She positions her pillow just the way she likes it and rests her head, tucking her hand under her cheek just so. She feels weight moving from the side of the bed, feels the blanket shift and feels an arm slither over her waist. She lifts her head to allow another to slip under her neck and she brings her hand up to clasp it, shimmies into the curve of the queen at her back and cries softly into the crook of her arm. She falls asleep and dreams of nothing, but her feet still feel wet and the air is still thick with moisture and filth./p


End file.
